


Punched Me in the Gut (Man, It Rattled My Soul)

by skarlatha



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Zombies, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Explicit Language, First Kiss, First Meetings, I Swear This Is Happier Than My Last Soulmate AU, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, but nothing graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-27
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-11-05 17:07:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11017785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skarlatha/pseuds/skarlatha
Summary: The "your soulmate's first words to you are written on your arm" AU nobody asked for. Daryl's been waiting his whole life to hear how pretty his eyes are from the mouth of a sexy man, but it comes when he least expects it.





	Punched Me in the Gut (Man, It Rattled My Soul)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cornbread5287](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cornbread5287/gifts).



> Title from Blake Shelton’s “Good Country Song,” mostly because I’m basically in love with Blake Shelton so you know. Stuff happens. 
> 
> This one's for CB because we were talking about the soulmate AU thing and she suggested that it might be nice to have somebody say something really nice as their mark. So I went there halfway.

“Momma, what’s mine say?” 

He’s sitting on her lap while they watch television, some overly dramatic soap opera where yet another soulmate reveal has happened, a sleeve pulled back and a sudden camera cut to the surprised eyes of the other people in the room. It happens at least once a week, and every time, Daryl asks about his own soulmark, written in a compact, careful hand with each letter formed perfectly. 

She takes his arm and kisses the top of his head. “Baby, you know what it says. Read it with me.” 

Her fingernail taps at the first legible word, tactfully ghosting over the line of cigarette burns that obscure the rest. “You,” Daryl says, wiggling his feet in excitement even though he already knows what’s to come. “Have. Pretty. Eyes.” He looks back up at his mother and beams, and she laughs and kisses his head again.

“Good boy,” she murmurs into his soft hair. “My smart little baby.”

He grins and tugs at her arm, pushes the sleeve of her shirt up so he can see the handwriting there, a loopy script that reads  _ Well, aren’t you a pretty little thing. _ He says the words to her, more quoting than really reading since he hasn’t quite learned his letters yet, but she smiles at him all the same and tells him again how smart he is.

//

She dies on a Wednesday, plumes of smoke streaming into the sky and turning the whole town gray. On Thursday, Daryl’s father sits him down and tells him that he won’t be coddled anymore, that he’s going to be expected to earn his keep by doing chores and staying out of the way. It’s easy at first. Daryl’s a quick kid and he gets all his chores done right after school and then disappears into the woods until nightfall. 

He doesn’t even miss his mother for a long time. The chores and teaching himself to hunt and track keep him busy, and school still comes easy to him for a while so he keeps his grades up. It’s not until one summer day, another Wednesday, when he’s out of school and he turns on the TV to the same soap opera channel, that he starts to cry.

His father hears him and comes to stand in the doorway. “Boy, you better quit your cryin’ before I give you something to cry about.”

There’s a cigarette in his mouth. By Friday, all Daryl has of his soulmark is the memory of reading it with his mother on lazy afternoons.

Daryl never cries again.

//

The next few years take their toll on Daryl’s body, leaving scars and bruises and a couple of broken bones that never quite heal right, and he takes to smoking like his mother and drinking like his father to get through the day. The first time he’s drunk is when he’s thirteen, and he remembers sitting at the table with his cheek pressed against the wood, trying his damndest not to move because moving makes the room spin. 

“Damn, he’s an ugly kid, ain’t he?” one of Merle’s friends says, and the laughter of the others echoes off the walls before Merle cuts in.

“Not as ugly as you’re gonna be once I get done with you if you don’t stop talking shit about my brother,” Merle says, and Daryl smiles a little at the support. Merle’s a shitty brother ninety percent of the time, but the other ten percent almost makes up for it, and at least Merle doesn’t hit him so he’ll take that any day of the week. 

And besides, Daryl takes comfort in the knowledge that someone one day is going to think that his eyes are pretty. It doesn’t matter how ugly the rest of him is as long as he gets to that day.

//

He graduates high school with much better grades than he would admit to, and he tells his Momma about them every time a report card comes out. His father doesn’t appreciate all the A’s on the paper, actually disapproves of them, because all he needs are D’s to graduate and anything more than that means he’s spending time studying that could be better spent working and making money to siphon straight into his father’s tab down at the local bar. 

He intentionally bombs the last test in his AP calculus class so that he won’t be valedictorian. If he has to make a speech, it will give everything away. He doubts his father will even come to graduation, but Merle will, and Merle isn’t exactly known for keeping his damn mouth shut and so it would definitely get back to Will. 

His Momma is proud of him, though. He can feel it through the grass on top of her grave as he talks to her about it, tells her he misses her, updates her on how no one has told him he has pretty eyes yet, but he’s still hopeful. It’s going to happen one day. 

He doesn’t apply to college. There’s really no point, not when he likes his job at the lumber yard well enough and he’s already halfway to a promotion to foreman by the time he’s eighteen. But it’s enough to know that he  _ could _ . 

//

When he’s twenty-five, he meets a man who tells him he has a nice ass, and that’s close enough for a while. It’s not a bad relationship, just  _ boring _ , and neither of them talks about the fact that their soulmarks don’t match, that Daryl’s is romantic while Jeff’s says  _ Can I get a seat-belt extender? _ and the handwriting is all wrong anyway. 

But the sex is good, and it’s nice to have someone to come home to, so they put up with it for a while. After all, not everybody finds their soulmate--it’s actually fairly rare, given that a lot of people are walking around with variations on  _ Hello _ written on their arms and nothing else, so there’s no way for most people to know for sure. 

Then one day, Jeff comes home from work with a mysterious, brooding overweight man on his arm, and he gives Daryl a sheepish shrug and moves out within a few hours. Daryl doesn’t really care--after all, if he’d found his soulmate he’d move out too, and so he gives Jeff a hug and wishes him well, and that’s the end of that.

//

It’s not until he’s driving to Merle’s wedding that it hits him: he’s thirty-three years old and even though that’s not exactly elderly, it’s getting to the time that he might need to start looking for his soulmate if he wants to ever find him. Merle found his husband-- _ husband _ , imagine that--on OKSoulmate and he’d given Daryl a subscription since it had worked out so well for him, and maybe Daryl should make an effort for once and put up more than a half-assed profile with a blurry profile picture from the time his co-workers at the lumber yard had convinced him to do karaoke with them one night. It’s not particularly flattering and it’s outdated anyway, and if he wants to find his soulmate he should really take a picture that shows off his eyes a little more. 

It’s a long shot anyway, though, he reminds himself. And who knows, maybe one of the other groom’s groomsmen will take a shine to him and compliment him, and then it will be smooth sailing from there on out. Daryl makes a mental note to make sure that whatever the first thing he says to the people he meets at the wedding will be something profound, something another man would be proud to have on his arm. 

He’s rehearsing some of his possible lines as he pulls up to a stop light, but the romantic mood is ruined when he hears a sickening crunch and his truck lurches forward, almost sending him into the intersection. 

“Aw,  _ hell  _ no,” Daryl yells, smacking his steering wheel with a fist, and then he throws the truck into park and leaps out of his door, stalking toward the SUV behind him that has just crunched into the back end of his truck.

“You bitch-ass motherfucker,” Daryl yells at the man climbing out of the SUV. He gestures at the damage with sharp movements and continues stalking forward. “Watch where you’re fucking going! Or is that too hard to do with your entire head up your fucking asshole? Jesus Christ. A fucking blind-ass monkey with shit for brains could drive better than you do, you fucking prick.” 

He turns to look at the damage, noting the deeply dented tailgate and slightly crumpled bumper with ugly maroon paint scraped all over it from the SUV. “Son of a bitch,” he mutters, then looks back up at the other driver, who’s staring at him with wide eyes. Daryl frowns even harder.  “What the  _ fuck  _ are you looking at, you cocksucking dickbag?”

The man blinks several times, then shakes his head almost like he can’t believe what’s happening. “Sorry, it’s just… Goddamn, you have pretty eyes.”

Daryl stares at him for a few seconds, all the blood rushing away from his skin and leaving him slightly cold with horror. “Oh, no. No, no, no. You are  _ shitting  _ me.”

The other man laughs a little breathlessly, rolling up the sleeve of his dress shirt slowly and holding his arm out for Daryl to see. Daryl swallows down the horrified lump in his throat and looks at it, his eyes raking quickly over the tiny, messy scrawl that takes up most of the man’s forearm, from  _ you bitch-ass motherfucker  _ all the way down to  _ what the fuck are you looking at, you cocksucking dickbag _ and no, no, no, no,  _ no _ . He looks back up at the other man, his mouth hanging uselessly open, caught somewhere between wondering what to possibly say next and vowing to never speak again because he’s said quite enough for a lifetime, thank you very much.

“It’s been an interesting life, waiting for you,” the man says, but he’s smiling and his stunningly blue eyes are twinkling with humor, so at least Daryl has that going for him. “I’m Rick.”

“Daryl,” he chokes out, rubbing at his own arm where the words he’s just heard used to be. “Man, I am  _ so  _ sorry. I feel like a complete asshole.”

Rick laughs again. “You’ve got the rest of our lives to make it up to me. Sorry about your truck.”

Daryl scoffs and waves dismissively at the vehicles. “It’s just a truck. Not even too bad, anyway. Just some dents. Easy to fix.”

“Still, I’ll pay for the damage.” Rick pulls out his phone and looks at Daryl sheepishly. “I hate to run right after meeting you, but I’m already running late. Can you give me your number and we’ll meet up later?”

Daryl blinks again, then groans. “Shit, I’m late too. It’s my brother’s wedding. I can’t miss it.” He grabs Rick’s phone and types in his contact information, then sends himself a text so he has Rick’s. 

“No kidding? I’m on my way to my best friend’s wedding. I’m his best man.”

Daryl hands Rick’s phone back, letting their fingers trail over each other a bit more than necessary and reveling in the electric feel of finally touching his soulmate. “Shane Walsh?”

Rick lets out another short bark of laughter. “You’re Merle’s brother?”

“Guilty as charged,” Daryl says, his eyes flickering down to settle on Rick’s lips. “Want to get drunk at the reception and make out in a closet?”

“Sounds wonderful,” Rick answers. He takes a step forward and puts an arm around Daryl’s waist. “But first…”

And as their lips come together, the car horns blaring around them and the smell of the hot pavement swirling around, Daryl swears he hears his mother’s voice in his ear, murmuring the words like a mantra of love.

_ Goddamn, you have pretty eyes. _


End file.
